


Not Your Story

by Ramasi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-09 18:35:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramasi/pseuds/Ramasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part #136 of Rumplestiltskin screwing up Regina's life. Introspection masquerading as smut. Set at a not more clearly defined time after Regina becomes queen but before she kills the king.<br/><i>Cora tried to tie her with a parody of love, to exhort her to gratitude; and Cora lost her</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Your Story

**Author's Note:**

> Consent Issues due to aforementioned power imbalance (this is set while Regina is still Rumple's student). There's a good chance the 'explicit' rating is overkill, but in doubt rate higher and all that.

Her lips are painted dark, the blood-red of deep wounds. Her eyes are lined in the deepest black, with a hint of poisonous green. There's a faint glow to her cheeks, painted as well, masking any genuine blush. Not a bit of bare skin in sight on her face.

She looks older than she is. She's put her hair up, in a complicated construction, like a crown grown from her head, and there's magic weaved into it, he can feel its tingle when he touches it, and maybe that's why. It's fake, all of it, in the absence of true self-control, but it's a good trick, it will help, it will stick. More than she knows.

And then, the way her body moves, elegant, flexible curve of the back, regal even in its nakedness, her head high, those aren't play-pretend: she rises up above him, on the feather-bed he's conjured up, her nails, long and sharp, grazing his skin, circling above his crotch as he lies spread out beneath her; and if some reality is born from semblance he is in danger, for Regina has no respect for power in ease and stillness.

Yet he waits, keeping his breath shallow, until, hands dancing closer, she locks eyes with him; there's the faintest smile of triumph on the corner of her lips, though the painting makes it larger, turns it into a confident smirk, and it doesn't reach her eyes. Instead they burn with hatred, with anger; with desire too, in which the lust that makes her legs shake, so faintly that if it wasn't for the disturbance in the magic of her hair he wouldn't have noticed, plays only a small part. The want that boils in her can't be satisfied by an orgasm, or ten, or by the pleasure of making him scream.

Still; his hand shots up and grabs her at the throat; she stills; her eyes widen, he can feel the shiver that runs through her beneath his palm, down to her hands. _He_ has no sharp nails, no blades; only bones like steel holding her still, unforgiven as fate, or death.

Her shock doesn't last long; he has only time to notice the presence of something changing in her attitude, and then pain pierces through him from between his legs; a whine escapes him, and it takes all his self-control to keep from magically shutting off his body from all sensation.

Regina, above him, in his unforgiving grip, shudders with delight, while he feels himself go flask.

"You like that," he murmurs up at her, darkly, the unsteadiness of his voice masked by its habitual edge; though Regina, of all people, might hear it. In any case, she grins at him, her dangerous fingers turning back to a caress, confident that she can make him rise again; he forces himself to smile back, not without admiration: it's for his own creative powers, not her, but Regina is not humble enough to tell the difference. "Don't do it again."

"Or what?"

"Or you can leave."

Stillness.

Her affection for him is all but gone, only the vestiges of her desperate need for love remaining, reflecting back until she can discard them for something better; but Cora tried to tie her with a parody of love, to exhort her to gratitude; and Cora lost her. He will not make that mistake: he has not asked her to love him even when she did; he has not named a price for every lesson; he has gifted her with knowledge, with powers, with the mirage of possibilities, and he has always delivered. She might try to destroy him one day; but she won't get loose.

She begins to move her hand again. She gives no answer. He allows himself to relax back into the warmth of it; her hands, fingers careful now, sending ghost-caresses up his stomach, down to his toes, granting him a pure pleasure he has never known when he was mortal and deprived of power; her body is moving faintly above him, in anticipating of something else, her legs only brushing against his; candlelight plays on her skin, shadows settling beneath her breasts, in the hollow of her curved abdomen. Her eyes are clear as mirrors, trying to hide her soul away, and as he lets this fill him he watches the red marks vanish from her throat.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks, later, when the comfortable warmth has sharpened into something acute and needy. The mask holds her face in place, that cruel curl of her mouth, those glittering eyes enclosed in precise darkness. It is hard not to feel anything; if he didn't know her in and out -

"No," he bites out; her smile widens, and she lets go and moves to straddle him; a flush has taken over her neck, erasing his fingers' imprints, and this time perhaps she's not thinking of anything else; he can't pretend to truly understand this. "You're the most talented student I've ever had."

The glow that comes over her is immediate; she's not yet above being pleased by his praise, magic still feels like a fragile gift to her, though he's assured her this is her, all her, that it was always inside her. He didn't lie, and he can feel something of it ripple through him as she lowers herself onto him: she's brimming with untapped power, fury, desire, repressed legitimate anger, is what he told her, power arching to be made manifest; but in truth it is hope burning inside her against every pain and evidence, fearful but absolute, desperate, stupid, she clenches around him, unproven unrelenting faith that something better awaits her, that her sins will be erased, that sacrifices will be worth it, that she won't have to settle for pale imitations – once, twice she moves, he knows he won't hold out long – that loss can't be as eternal, as unfair as this.

He comes within moments; he loses himself, and then it's over, and mild irritation settles in. Regina is looking at him, grappling for countenance; he moves away swiftly, leaving her kneeling on the bed above him, lost. She is, at this stage, too romantic to feel contempt instead of disappointment.

"You -"

He snaps his fingers, and she cries out, falls back down on the bed in a shudder. There's no finesse to it; but it gets the job done.

Eyes closed, he counts the seconds during which Regina lies still, by his side, breathing heavily. He thought, for a while, that it was magic that had heightened his senses, but now he thinks it was that constant over-attention and fear have ceased to numb them.

It's over two minutes before she speaks, and her voice is amused, if shaky.

"Can you teach me that?"

"Perhaps," he says with a smile, considering it. He has no interest in having Regina capable of achieving satisfaction of any sort with the snap of a finger; but then again, easy things can grow stale very fast. "If your progress is satisfactory."

She's not pleased by that, he can tell: she didn't think this was a lesson, a transaction, and he can feel the biting retorts die on her lips at the reminder: she still needs him. She sits up, her back very straight; her hold is slipping, the crown of her hair coming undone in small strands and curls. She's not yet far enough even to truly resent it. Perhaps he _will_ teach her. There's nothing like habit for leaving a mark.

"I should go," Regina snaps, glancing back from the corner of her eyes, as if she had any real fear of being missed and suspected back home: these days, she remembers she's the queen when it's convenient.

He makes sure to disappear while she's not looking, discarded clothes and lingering scent of sex and all; she might have been alone all along.


End file.
